The Mind and the Heart Pastor Mike Miller

A hard heart is a heart that does not feel the pain or feelings of others. A hard heart is set on self and simply does not really, truly care about anyone else.

The ultimate goal of the tempter is to make sure your heart is in control. When we are tempted our mind is presented with a lie and a promise to our heart to gratify some feeling or desire.

We are motivated by what is in our heart, not what is in our mind. The mind is to be the guard of the heart, but if the mind is AWOL, lazy, distracted or obsessed, or feeding on false information the heart is wide open and becomes the guide of our life. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.

The mind operates on truth - the heart operates on imagination. The heart adds emotion and feeling to thoughts and knowledge. The heart adds the other senses to whatever is presented to our mind - through imagination. This is the root of what the second commandment deals with and the very thing that God always charged his people with when they were apostate.

A reprobate mind is a mind that is broken and unsound. It is so important to guard and nurture our mind and our thoughts that they not become corrupted with falsehood and fantasy lest we become reprobates.

The mind is the battlefield where Satan tries to get a stronghold in our life. We must care for our mind and guard it from Satan, but we must also learn to recognize that the minds of our loved ones and others are also under attack and come to their aid. We must not aid the devil in his battering of their mind but strengthen them against the attack.